"That dumbass…" The curse slipped from Razeal's lips in a low murmur, venom wrapped tightly around every syllable. His gaze remained fixed on the kneeling figure beside the throne Yograj, head bowed, shoulders tense, the picture of submission.

I want to kill that bastard right now.

The thought was sharp, violent, instinctive. His fingers twitched at his side, nails digging faintly into his palm as he fought the urge to move. There was no doubt in his mind.. no room for alternatives or excuses. If Merisa had found him here, if she was sitting there now with that calm, knowing expression, then Yograj was the alone fucking reason. There was no other way.

She wouldn't have come here otherwise.

Annoyance coiled tight in his chest, layered beneath something heavier frustration, wariness, the dull ache of inevitability. He had prepared himself for many things, but not this. His mind raced, calculating distances, exits, angles plans stacking atop plans as he searched for a way out of the situation.

But then again he just sighed.

He forced himself to breathe, to slow down. Fighting her now would be suicide. She was still far stronger than him.. stronger in ways he couldn't yet bridge, no matter how much he'd changed. One day, maybe. But today definitely wasn't that day.

Well yeah he was totally confuse in running away from her.. Very easily actually.. But he couldn't simply run.

That was the problem.

If he fled now, everything he had come here for would collapse. He needed to speak with the king. That conversation mattered more than bother to fight her for now and he was sure she wouldn't be able to kill him even if she wants to. So he just stayed still, eyes flicking back to Merisa only long enough to read her posture.

She hadn't moved.

She wasn't advancing or anything. She was simply… watching him. Calm. Observant. As if she had all the time in the world.

So she's waiting.

The realization settled in his mind like a weight. Maybe she already knew what he planned to do here. Maybe she was letting him finish whatever scheme he came here to pull off.

His gaze slid back to Yograj, kneeling obediently beside the throne. The man didn't dare lift his head. Razeal's lips pressed into a thin line.

Traitor.

Merisa noticed the shift immediately.

She had been watching him closely, cataloging every flicker of expression, every subtle tension in his body. The momentary crack in his composure the way surprise had rippled through him when he saw her had not gone unnoticed.

Her smile widened, slow and deliberate.

Amused.

She lifted one perfectly shaped brow, then the other, a small teasing motion that would have been almost playful under different circumstances. There was something undeniably pleased in her eyes. She didn't know why, but she found his reaction… endearing. Seeing him caught off guard like this, stripped of that infuriating calm he so often wore.. it stirred something warm and unexpected in her chest.

Razeal caught the gesture.

The effect was immediate.

Whatever softness had briefly appeared in his face vanished in an instant, replaced by cold indifference. He turned his head away from her, deliberately breaking eye contact, as if she were nothing more than background noise.

Ignored.

Merisa's smile faltered just for a fraction of a second.

Something dark and aching stirred behind her eyes. Sorrow, sharp and sudden, pierced through the satisfaction she'd felt moments earlier. But she was Merisa Virelan. She had mastered the art of control long ago.

The sadness vanished, buried beneath a composed, elegant smile beautiful and untouchable.

"I must thank you," she said calmly, her voice naturally cold, authority woven effortlessly into every word. "If you hadn't told me he would be here, I would never have had the chance to see those… flustered expressions." She said through some mental techniques which only rang in Yograjs head.

And Yograj flinched.

His body trembled as her words washed over him. He nodded quickly, deeply..

"Just my honor, Madam," he said hastily, voice tight. "I don't deserve praise.".. Reply same way with mental link created between two by her.

He didn't dare look up.. not at her, not at Razeal. Shame burned hot in his chest, mingled with fear and resentment.

As if I wanted to tell you anything.. He said in his head

The memory of her arrival made his jaw clench. One moment he'd been free, the next she had appeared out of nowhere, overwhelming him with terrifying ease. She beat him uo for no reason the restrained him, and then without hesitation directly read through his memories as if they were pages in an open book.

He hadn't even been able to resist.

What choice did I have?

Bitter thoughts churned in his mind as he cursed his own misfortune. He'd fallen into her hands again. And now.. now he was kneeling here again, stripped of dignity..

I should've run the moment I realized who that bastard was to her. Ge thought to himself.

Merisa didn't spare him another glance.

Her attention was fully on Razeal now.

He stood there, rigid, deliberately looking everywhere except at her. The way he held himself.. the unfamiliar confidence, the altered posture made her study him more closely.

How did my son change this much?

The differences were undeniable. His height. His build. The sharpness of his features. Even his hair and eye color everything had changed. Even the aura around him was nothing like before. Dense. Controlled And dangerous in a quiet way.

If he were a stranger, she might not have recognized him at all.

But he wasn't.

He was her son.

And she could never mistake that.. She had recognised him in one glance.

Still, the transformation unsettled her. She lifted a hand to her forehead, pressing her fingers lightly against her temple as she sighed inwardly. Worry gnawed at her, questions stacking one atop another.

What did he do now? She thought worriedly..

These past days had been… difficult for her. Even after reading Yograj's memories and learning that Razeal would be here, the uncertainty had weighed heavily on her. Knowing didn't ease the fear.. not really.

But now…

She was happy.

In fact.. in a far better mood than anyone would have expected.

The moment her eyes had settled on Razeal standing there alive, steady, undeniably whole something tight inside her chest had finally loosened. He looked healthy. Stronger. There was no sign of injury, no trace of desperation clinging to him. His presence alone was enough to ease days of restless worry that she had never allowed herself to acknowledge openly.

More importantly, what she had seen inside Yograj's memories had brought her quiet relief.

Razeal had not fled the Empire to disappear into Atlantis, as she had feared. He wasn't trying to abandon the world he was born into, wasn't running away to hide himself among the sea folk forever. Instead, he had come here for a purpose for something specific he intended to obtain.

Which meant he would leave.

And would return to land.

That single realization had softened something deep inside her. If he had truly chosen exile.. if he had wanted to live far away from everything, from her she had already prepared herself to accept it, no matter how much it hurt. She would have let him go, even if the thought hollowed her out from the inside.

But this… this was different.

This meant he wasn't running.

And that mattered more than she cared to admit.

Her gaze lingered on him from afar, studying him without restraint. The way he stood. The quiet confidence in his posture. The fact that he wasn't alone.

People surrounded him.

That alone was enough to stir complicated emotions in her chest. As last time she had seen him in that duel. He looked unbearably lonely.. so isolated that even he hadn't seemed to realize it himself.

Now, there were others walking beside him. People who spoke to him. Followed him.. And Maybe even his friends.

It meant he was atleast trying.

Trying to live. Trying to build something for himself. Trying to exist as more than a forgotten shadow.

That realization brought her a strange, quiet happiness.

Merisa rested her chin lightly against her palm, elbow propped against the arm of the throne, her eyes never leaving him. From this distance, she could only see the sharp line of his profile the familiar curve of his jaw, now hardened, matured. Handsome. Undeniably so.

Time had changed him.

And yet, some things hadn't changed at all.

Her thoughts drifted naturally to the reason he had come here in the first place.. Which obviously she got to know from yograj too.

Ocean's Black.

She had heard about this place, though few spoke of it. When she arrived in Atlantis, she had asked the king about it.

A desolate place. Worthless And kinda Dangerous.

An oceanic dumping ground, nothing more.. in simple words he had put.

Over countless years, the remains of dead monsters bodies, fragments, shattered cores had been carried there by the natural flow of the sea. Atlantis had no reason to intervene. No one wanted such refuse lingering near their waters. So it gathered, year after year, layer upon layer.

Thousands of years of accumulation.

The result was a nightmarish landscape.. floating masses of blackened matter, like drifting islands or jagged mountains suspended atop the sea. A place so dark it appeared like a black spot in ocean itself.

Ocean's Black.

Even now, as Merisa observed her son, she couldn't help but wonder why he would want to go there.. Like what does he want from useless monster cores?

Monster cores were studied, discarded, deemed failures long ago. No meaningful power could be extracted from them, no matter how many experiments had been conducted..

She hadn't known what he was doing with them, but she remembered clearly that he had gathered them in large quantities, helped by that small green-haired shopkeeper.

Her gaze shifted unconsciously to Levy.

She didn't need to think much longer.

An idea had already formed.

Of course.

She didn't need long to connect the pieces. The answer settled into her thoughts with quiet clarity.

It seemed… he could absorb monster cores and grow stronger from them just as people grew stronger by absorbing elemental cores.

The calm in her gaze deepened as she returned her focus to him. That would explain everything the sudden growth in strength, the unfamiliar energy she had sensed when he fought Sylva. That power hadn't felt like mana. Not quite. It had been something else entirely, something she couldn't categorize no matter how hard she tried.

Now it made sense.

It wasn't that he had lacked talent.

He had simply been walking a path no one else could see.

From the moment he was born, it had been as if the world rejected him. He couldn't absorb mana. He couldn't awaken his bloodline. Physical training yielded nothing. Even the most basic progress eluded him.

She had honestly tried everything.

World elixirs. Forbidden techniques. Ancient spells. Divine blessings. She had spared no cost, ignored no taboo. If there was even a whisper of a method that might help him, she pursued it relentlessly.

And every single attempt had failed.

Again and again.

It had been like throwing power into a void.

She had just thought maybe he was just talentless. Or maybe just cursed.

But now…

Now she wondered if all that time, she had simply been looking in the wrong direction.

Absorbing monster cores?

The thought would have sounded absurd to anyone else. Even to her, once. Monster cores were officially useless documented failures. No known being could draw strength from them.

And yet… Razeal had.

A soft exhale left her lips, something close to a self-deprecating breathless laugh.

So that's it…

Of all the strange, questionable, and outright dangerous methods she had attempted, this was the one thing she had never truly considered. Not because she lacked imagination but because the world itself had declared it impossible.

She hadn't been wrong.

Just… incomplete.

Her gaze softened as it rested on him once more, tinged now with a quiet sorrow.

If you wanted monster cores so badly… why didn't you just ask?

The thought cut deeper than she expected.

She would have given him everything. Without hesitation. She would have ordered rivers of blood spilled if that's what it took.. hunted monsters across continents, stripped the world bare of its cores if it meant giving what he wanted..

All he had needed to do was say the word.. But he didn't even though he knew i would've.. She thought in her head.

Her fingers curled faintly against her palm as she sighed inwardly.

A quiet, sorrowful sigh escaped her thoughts. She truly didn't know what else to do.

She knew without doubt that he would come if she called for help. That certainty only made it harder.

And so, all she could do was sigh again, softly, helplessly, carrying everything she couldn't bring herself to ask for.

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Thanks for reading well other chapter be there in some minutes.. Well i was planning to writing long chapter but wording be too long.. So will be dividing in two chapters

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